Pauline Gower

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Commander Pauline Gower waving from the cockpit of a de Havilland Tiger Moth in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, before a delivery flight on January 10, 1940
5 female aviators: Lettice Curtis, Jenny Broad, Audrey Sale Barker, Gabrielle Patterson and Pauline Gower
Pauline Gower, recorded at the Women's Engineering Society Awards dinner

Pauline Gower (born July 22, 1910 in Tonbridge , England , † March 2, 1947 in Royal Tunbridge Wells , England) was a British pilot and writer . During the Second World War, she founded the women's division of the Air Transport Relief.

life and work

Born the youngest daughter of MP Sir Robert Gower, Gower was educated at Beechwood Sacred Heart School. She obtained her A (private pilot) license in 1930 and the following year, after taking lessons at London's Stag Lane Aviation Club, she received her B (commercial pilot) license. As a licensed pilot, she really wanted to fly to India , but her father would not allow it and for her 21st birthday presented her with a two-seater airplane with a Cirrus III engine. She met Dorothy Spicer at the London Airplane Club on the Stag Lane Aerodrome and they became friends. In 1931 she founded an air taxi service with her in Kent . To help British hospitals, they held flight demonstrations in 200 cities in 1932. They joined the aviation division of the Women's Engineering Society in 1932. In 1935 they founded the charter airline Airtrips. In 1936, Gower was the first woman to receive a second class navigator license from the Department of Aviation and served as chief pilot at Tom Campbell Black's Air Display. In 1938 she was appointed civil protection commissioner in London with the Civil Air Guard . As an experienced professional pilot with more than 2000 flight hours, she was strongly committed to training women to become pilots. When the Second World War broke out, she used her high-ranking connections to establish a women's division in the new Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). She was appointed head of the women's department and began selecting and testing female pilots. In 1939 she trained eight female pilots who were appointed by the ATA in 1940. The so-called “First Eight” were experienced female pilots, each with more than 600 hours of flight time, and certified flight instructors. In 1943 she achieved equal pay with male pilots, as previously only 80% of men's wages were paid. She has published as a writer and wrote for Girls Own Paper and Chatterbox, as well as a poetry collection entitled: Piffling Poems for Pilots. She was the inspiration for the female aviator Worralls, whom William Earl Johns described in a number of his books. In 1943 she was awarded the title of MBE ( Member of the British Empire ) for her services. She became a board member of British Overseas Airways Corporation , the first woman to be appointed to such a position. In 1950 she received a Harmon Trophy Award posthumously . In 2008, the fifteen surviving female ATA members (and 100 surviving male pilots) received a special award from Prime Minister Gordon Brown . In 1945 she married Wing Commander Bill Fahie. She died in 1947 shortly after giving birth to twins.

Publications (selection)

  • 1934: Piffling Poems for Pilots. London, Ingpen & Grant.
  • 1938: Women with Wings. London, John Long.

literature

  • Fahie, Michael: A Harvest of Memories: The Life of Pauline Gower , MBE, 1995, ISBN 978-1-870384-37-7 .
  • Curtis, Lettice: The Forgotten Pilots , Nelson Saunders, Olney, Bucks, 1985; ISBN 0-947750-02-9
  • Edwards, Owen Dudley: The Battle of Britain and Children's Literature , in Paul Addison & Jeremy A. Crang (eds): The Burning Blue: a new history of the Battle of Britain. London, Pimlico, 2000; ISBN 0-7126-6475-0 .
  • Edwards, Owen Dudley: British Children's Fiction of the Second World War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-7486-1651-9 .
  • Whittell, Giles: Spitfire Women of World War II. 2007, Harper Press, ISBN 978-0-00-723535-3 .
  • Evelyn Zegenhagen: "Dashing German girls": female pilots between 1918 and 1945 , Wallstein Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0179-5 .
  • Henrietta Heald: Magnificent Women and their Revolutionary Machines , 2019, ISBN 978-1-78352-660-4 .
  • Helena Page Schrader: Sisters in Arms: The Women Who Flew in World War II , 2006, ISBN 978-1-84415-388-6 .

Web links

Commons : Pauline Gower  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Gower, Pauline
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fahie, Pauline (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British pilot and writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Tonbridge
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1947
Place of death Royal Tunbridge Wells , England